I feel like one who has long wandered through the desert, his feet burnt with the sand, his hair scorched with the sun, and, exhausted with hunger and thirst, feels death approaching.

Suddenly he discovers a green oasis, and a being with outstretched arms calling to him with a soft, angel-like voice: 'Come, save thyself in my arms; feel that thou art not alone in the desert, for I am with thee, and will sustain thee!'" "And I say it to you from the bottom of my heart," said Goethe, affectionately.

"Yes, here is one, who is only too happy to aid you, who can sympathize with every sorrow, because he has himself felt it in his own breast, who may even say of himself, like Ovid: 'Nothing human is strange to me.' If I can aid you, say so, and I will willingly do it." "No, you cannot," murmured Moritz.
"At least confide your grief to me; that is an alleviation." "Oh, how kind and generous you are!" Moritz said, pressing the hand of his new-made friend to his bosom.

"How much good it does me to listen to you, and look at your beautiful face! I believed myself steeled against every thing that could happen to mortals; that the fool which I would be had killed within me the higher man.

I was almost proud to have succeeded in deceiving men; that they mistook my grotesque mask for my real face; that they point the finger at me, and laugh, saying to each other: 'That is a fool, an original, whom Nature herself has chosen as a kind of court fool to society.' No one has understood the cry of distress of my soul.